


Lost in Translation

by Phiso



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: shaggydog_swap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4150698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phiso/pseuds/Phiso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius Black is a traveler who enjoys a challenge. Little does he know when he boards a ship to Newfoundland, he'll find his toughest challenge in a crew member called Remus Lupin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in Translation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sun Up, Wind High](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/121560) by pandafoot105. 



> For the Shaggydog Swap back in 2011. Inspired by Sun Up, Wind High by pandafoot105 (http://shaggydog-swap.livejournal.com/11130.html)
> 
> Thanks to my lovely prince for betaing! <3 And note there's ONE f-bomb near the end, but everything else is very G.

Boarding the cargo ship to Newfoundland was the best decision he had made in months.

It was going to be quite a ride, the crew had warned him, but Sirius didn't give a whit. He was a traveler! A wanderer! His life's work was squandering his inheritance by hopping from country to country, draining bank accounts and overall enjoying himself. Surely two weeks on a cargo ship wouldn't be all that bad, even if it was the middle of January. Yes, it was old; yes, it was slower than the average cargo ship; yes, he would have to work to earn his keep because he had spent the last of his share of the money just getting to Esbjerg. But what was money? His uncle had a nice fortune stored away for him that he hadn't touched yet, and his mate in New York, James Potter, was also filthy rich and would gladly help him out in a pinch. So it would be all right, Sirius thought as he stepped onto the ship's decking, breathing in the cold, sharp sea air. The voyage would be worth it. He could feel it.

=======

It didn't take long for him to get to know the crew. By the third day, Sirius felt like he had known them all his life. It helped that he had been given all of the most menial tasks, and thus the hardest ones to mess up: it gave him a chance to chat with the bloke beside him. Granted, they all had problems communicating , since the ship's crew was made up of men from all over the world, but Sirius knew enough languages to speak with most of them. It was no trouble at all.

Except with one: a tall man with light brown hair and a mysterious scar across his face. Everyone knew who he was - Remus Lupin, possessed of an oddly Latin name for someone supposedly from Russia - but that was all anyone knew. Remus showed no indication of speaking anything other than Russian; only the captain, a wizened Ukranian man with an impressive beard, and the First Mate, a Belarusian raised in Denmark, could give him orders.

"Does he ever smile?" Sirius asked Gustavo one evening as he helped the Spaniard fix a loose turnbuckle. He peered over his shoulder, spotting Remus re-knotting something on the opposite side of the ship. "He's so quiet."

Gustavo shrugged, clearly not invested in the topic. "Fuck if I know." He let out a grunt as he shoved the wrench into place and motioned for the screwdriver. Sirius handed it to him.

"I've never seen him do it, anyway," Gustavo added as he tightened the turnbuckle. "He's been on this boat longer than I have, going on two years now, and not once have I seen him smile."

=======

After some more poking around, Sirius only managed to produce three more facts about Remus Lupin: he was the longest working crew member on the ship aside from the captain (no one could say how long that was, to his disappointment), he refused promotion, and in all of those years, no one had ever reported seeing him smile. Hearing him laugh, needless to say, was equally unheard of.

Sirius found this strange and more than a little sad. Not one smile nor one little chuckle? He found himself obsessed with figuring out why, and as a result became very annoying for a good three days. He drilled the First Mate, Janka, constantly. As the second oldest crew member with ten years of service and a working knowledge of Russian, Sirius considered him the ship's most accessible expert on the Russian.

"I remember meeting him my first day on the ship," Janka mused one night in slurred English, his tongue loosened by Sirius's gift of port. They were sitting near the gangway, perched on a pair of boxes filled with extra rope. "I was twenty-five and in love with the sea. I wanted to sail on it forever, to one day reach the horizon that is impossible to catch."

Sirius felt a flash of impatience but snuffed it out. He wasn't going to get anything out of the man if he insulted him, even if he had ten bottles of port. Janka was too proud for that.

"The captain," Janka continued, "was a friend of my late father's, so he accepted me easily. He knew I knew how to sail a ship. I was a good sailor, even then."

"Still are now," Sirius added, trying to stay on Janka's good side.

The First Mate grinned. "Good lad, good lad," he said, patting Sirius on the back drunkenly with his cup. "Anyway..." He took another swig. "That Lupin boy, he was already on the ship by that time. He looked fourteen or fifteen at the time, a stick of a boy, like now, but even then you could see how the ship had molded him, toned him. He was strong for his age, let me tell you, and was wicked fast on the ropes. He moved like an acrobat, like a circus freak, but better, because he could do it on water, when the ship was rolling with the waves and would throw off anyone else's balance like that." He slapped the table for emphasis, and Sirius did the same for good measure. This pleased Janka, and he continued: "He doesn't do that so much now - ships change, even this old love - but he can still do it, I'd bet my life on it."

Sirius tried to imagine Remus flying across the robes like a bird, his lithe body making a stark silhouette against the moonlight flooding the decking. He wished he could see it.

"For some reason," the First Mate went on, frowning, "we can't get him to speak anything other than Russian. We don't even know if he can and he's just hiding it, or if he's really that bad with languages. The captain doesn't even really know where he's from. He just turned up one night in the cargo hold, a shivering heap of bones, huddled up in the middle of boxes so big they would've crushed a bug like him. I think I remember the captain telling me he was nine or ten at the time, but that was a guess. Lupin never told him. He just gave his name and asked for work. Serious as a funeral."

"Did..." Sirius hesitated, then motioned towards his face. "Did he already have...?"

"Long as any of us can remember," Janka grunted, shifting his position on the box and pouring himself another helping of port.

Sirius looked up at the stars, taking in the information. Remus must be about twenty-four or twenty-five, same age as him. He'd been on this ship for about fifteen years. And in all of those years, Sirius thought with a heavy heart, Remus had never smiled.

=======

The morning after hearing Remus's story, Sirius decided to embark on the most difficult mission he had ever faced: making Remus Lupin smile.

It was going to be hard, Sirius knew, largely because he knew about as much Russian as a canary, but he was more than willing to give it a try. He couldn't explain why, but he really wanted to see how a smile looked on his face. Just to see.

First things first: determine if he really only spoke Russian.

Remus was always the first one awake after the captain, so Sirius woke up even earlier in order to meet him at the head. There, he sat on the toilet for a good half hour (shirtless, of course, because every little thing could help, even if he was shivering like a mad man) before he heard footsteps coming. As soon as he did, he jumped up and began to make a big show of washing his face in the hopes of appearing as though he had just woken up.

"Oh, hullo!" Sirius greeted in English as he shut the faucet off and reached for his only towel. "Didn't see you there."

Remus stared at him blankly. All right, so English was out.

"Need to use the toilet?" he asked, this time in Spanish as he unfolded it. Remus's expression did not change, and Sirius tried again.

"Sorry, I'll hurry," he said in French, flashing Remus a smile. Nothing.

"I must sound like a crazy person to you," he mumbled in German, chancing a glance at Remus before drying his face. Remus didn't just look uninterested, now, but impatient as well. Perfect.

"What about Italian?" Sirius tried. "Greek?" Nope. "Some shitty Arabic that I never fail to butcher?"

Remus crossed his arms and gave Sirius a pointed look. "Russkiy yazyk," he said simply, which Sirius took to be Russian for 'Russian'. Sirius sighed.

"I don't speak Russian," he said in English, trying his best to look adorably sheepish. It didn't work.

Remus motioned towards the sink, clearly asking if Sirius was done. Sighing, Sirius grabbed his towel and left, dejected enough to not notice how Remus watched him leave.

=======

Plan B: Look like an idiot and see if it would make Remus laugh at him. The spirit of the laugh didn't matter; it could be malicious or light-hearted, just so long as it came with a smile.

The first attempt came later that afternoon. Sirius decided to start climbing everything and anything he could, singing stupid drinking songs in various languages all the while. The main problem with this plan was that he quickly discovered that, while he could climb trees like a monkey, he couldn't climb much else.

The other crew members had a grand time watching him try and fail to climb the mast. He tried the rigging after falling on his arse for the seventh time in a row, but the ropes were deceptively difficult. He somehow managed to get so entangled that at the end of his struggle, he was hanging upside down, supported only by a rope's firm hold around his ankle.

"Good job there, idiot," Gustavo laughed, and Sirius grinned.

"I try!" he hollered back, bringing on another chorus of guffaws. He chanced a glance at Remus, hoping that his voice was part of the chorus, but it wasn't. Instead, Remus seemed intent on ignoring him as he leaned against the side of the ship, checking something on a piece of paper he had in his hands.

"Oi!" Sirius called out in English, hoping against hope. "Remus! Help me out here?"

Remus slowly lifted his head, his expression unreadable, and Sirius felt his heart skip a beat as their gazes locked. He has golden eyes, Sirius thought vaguely. How had he missed that?

The pause was so long that the laughter had died out by the time Remus moved. Folding the paper neatly into a square and putting it in his pocket, he studied the riggings intently before reaching for a rope and pulling himself up.

It was nearly impossible to see how exactly Remus managed to cross the ship using nothing but the ropes and riggings. Sirius blinked once and felt like he had missed half of the journey. Janka hadn't been kidding; Remus looked perfectly at ease on the ropes, his balance as steady as it would be on dry land, his face never betraying a moment of worry.

The ship was silent as Remus stopped next to Sirius. He motioned for Sirius to get a good hold on the riggings, and after a surprised beat Sirius followed the Russian's instructions. There was a lightning-quick movement of Remus’ hand at his captured foot then Sirius let out a disoriented yell as his body weight flew downwards, flipping him right-side up. Now he could see why Remus had told him to hold on.

Remus might have been able to drop from such a height and still land on his feet, but Sirius was nowhere near as talented. Thus, his progression was very slow and embarrassed, his shame heightening as Remus watched him climb down, apparently ready to do something should he get caught again. By the time he was on the ground he was certain his face was red and burning.

"Thank you," Sirius said in English, wishing he could avoid Remus's gaze but determined to see if there was anything close to a smile on the other's face.

There wasn't. Remus only eyed Sirius for a second before nodding. His hand fished the piece of paper back out of his pocket as he turned and walked to the ladder, climbed down, and disappeared from view.

=======

Since Plan B failed, it was time for Plan C: attempt to flirt.

The desire to flirt wasn't difficult to summon at all. Remus was thin, yes, but every now and then he took off his thick coat, revealing shirts and jumpers that he wore very, very well. Furthermore, now that he had noticed Remus's eye color, Sirius couldn't help trying to catch his gaze whenever he could, trying to catch just one more glimpse. And then there was the matter of his face. The scar didn't mutilate it; if anything, it heightened the attractiveness of all of his features, giving him the air of a mysterious warrior with a dark past. Which, for all Sirius knew, could be the truth. Russia was a hard country, he'd heard, even on its children. If, of course, Remus was even Russian.

It started small. Bumping shoulders, accidentally running into him, reaching for the same thing at the same time. When none of that provoked a reaction, Sirius upped his technique, adding charming smiles, suggestive eyebrow waggles, and playful winks to the game. Still nothing.

"Give it up," Janka told him one night over a late dinner. "He's not going to talk to you. He doesn't talk to anyone. He barely talks to me, and he has to."

Sirius didn't say anything in response. He couldn't give up, not now. He could barely sleep from wondering what that smile must look like. How could he imagine living the rest of his life not knowing?

=======

There were no more plans. It was the last day before they landed in Newfoundland, and Sirius was sitting outside by himself, nursing a steaming cup of chocolate he had just made with some surprise stores the cook had found earlier that day. The cold bit him like knives where his coat was open over his pajamas, but he felt too despondent to care. He could do nothing but stare up into the sky heavy with dark clouds threatening snow. They were choking the sunset, he mused. All he could see were clouds, saying nothing, showing nothing.

Like him.

"What is that?" a voice asked out of nowhere, and Sirius nearly fell off the edge of the ship. Who was that? He thought he recognized the voice, but it was speaking English, and without too much of a Russian accent, either.

"It's hot chocolate," he said cautiously, cursing the ship's angle in the dying light for making the body nothing but a silhouette. "We just found some in the galley."

"I see."

And then, like magic, the light shifted, and Sirius gaped in surprise as Remus Lupin walked up to him and leaned against the ship's banister beside him, not meeting his gaze. Sirius wanted to say something, anything, but it felt like his brain had been wiped clean.

"You speak English," he managed at last, and Remus looked at him.

"I don't like to show it off," he said quietly, studying Sirius before looking away into the distance again.

Another silence, then: "So why do it now?"

Remus didn't say anything at first. He merely stared at the horizon, watching as the sun peeked through the shifting clouds. Sirius held his breath, clutching the mug of chocolate with both of his chilled hands.

"Why do you keep talking to me?" Remus asked finally.

Crap, quick, think of something! "Because...I..."

Remus’s gaze was steady. "Because what?"

But Sirius didn't know what to say. Suddenly the entire mission sounded incredibly stupid. Instead, he held out his hot chocolate.

"Here," he said. "Take it."

Remus stared at the still-steaming mug. "But it's yours."

"Just take it," Sirius insisted. "Or I'm chucking it overboard."

Remus took it then, and the moment that he did, it began to snow.

Sirius let out a whoop of laughter and ran up to the tip of the forecastle, leaving a startled Remus behind on the deck.

"Look, Remus," he called, pointing out to the horizon. The clouds had lightened, revealing a deep red sun and a beautiful technicolor sky that was reflected in the sea. It was like sailing into a painting. He waited for Remus to step up beside him before he said, "I've traveled all over Europe, Remus, and I've never seen a sky like that before."

Sirius felt rather than saw Remus take a sip of the hot chocolate before answering, "I've traveled the world, and I haven't either."

Sirius turned to Remus, his eyes curious and friendly, and to his delight, Remus looked right on back.

"I'm glad I get to see it with you, then," Sirius said honestly - and lo and behold, miracle of miracles, Remus finally cracked a tiny smile.

"You -!" Sirius shouted, feeling like a child on Christmas morning. "You smiled!"

Remus was clearly taken aback, but Sirius didn't care. He was too excited to see what he had given up as impossible.

"You smiled!" he repeated before letting out a brilliant laugh. "The thing I've been waiting for for two weeks, and you finally give it to me - a smile! Oi, you hear that, world?" he yelled as he ran up as close to the tip of the ship as he could, spreading his arms wide as if he wanted to embrace everything the light could reach. The wind whipped his hair back and he laughed again, uproariously, feeling stupendously alive. "Remus Lupin just smiled! There should be a chorus of fucking angels playing right now, I mean it!"

Remus's laugh filled his heart, and Sirius turned around, eager to catch it. Remus’s face looked a little sad when he laughed, Sirius noticed, and it was clear that he was out of practice, but it was still warm beneath all that. He could feel it like a sip of hot chocolate, rich and sweet and thawing him from the inside out.

"I love it when you laugh," Sirius declared, grinning, and Remus gave him another smile.

"You really are something, Sirius Black," he said with a shake of a head.

Sirius beamed as he waved off the compliment and turned back towards the glorious sunset. "Oh, I'm nothing compared to you."


End file.
